Worst teacher you've ever had?

m0ynihan

Just curious.

My worst was my 2nd year maths teacher, complete pushover and couldn't explain stuff for his life...

Example:

My class used to throw shoes around the classroom. On numerous occasions the shoe would land right in front of him. What did he do? He gave it back!

No wonder I can't do factorising!

steddyeddy

My chemsitry teacher did'nt know what an amino acid was (thats pretty basic). He didnt care either. Chemistry was a job to him and all that mattered was that he ticked some boxes for what experiment to teach.

Praetorian Saighdiuir

The woodwork teacher was an alcoholic and spent his time throwing lumps of Red Deal at pupils who werent listening to him.

Other teachers were pedo priests............soooo take your pic.

Pilotdude5

Junior cert English teacher. She spent all her time pointing out people's flaws and appearance. My mother and aunts had her as well back in the day so the family hates her.

m0ynihan

steddyeddy wrote: »

My chemsitry teacher did'nt know what an amino acid was (thats pretty basic). He didnt care either. Chemistry was a job to him and all that mattered was that he ticked some boxes for what experiment to teach.

I had an English teacher who thought Donegal shouldn't have a capital letter. Seriously..

steddyeddy

m0ynihan wrote: »

I had an English teacher who thought Donegal shouldn't have a capital letter. Seriously..

What was his reasoning behind that :S?

m0ynihan

steddyeddy wrote: »

What was his reasoning behind that :S?

I don't have a clue. I know it's a bad place, but it's not THAT bad!

danslevent

steddyeddy wrote: »

My chemsitry teacher did'nt know what an amino acid was (thats pretty basic). He didnt care either. Chemistry was a job to him and all that mattered was that he ticked some boxes for what experiment to teach.

If someone qualified as a Chemistry teacher they would know what an Amino Acid was. If he didn't then he lied about his degree and should have been reported.

itac

Had a subsitute History teacher for the Leaving, who was also an actor who'd been on Ros na Run, with a faux American twang, wore a leather jacket and who bore more than a passing resemblance to the Fonz. His way of teaching was to read some event from the history book to us, and then launch into a story about how said event related to an audition he'd once had.

He was teaching in an all girls school, and seemed to be under the impression that as he was Fonz-like, we would all fall in love with him. Or at the very least, think he was cool. Strangely enough, neither of those things happened....

Wompa1

Had an Irish teacher in Secondary school who wasn't a qualified teacher. She worked as a secretary and helped out when someone left. She just kept doing it. Her idea of controlling the class room was leaving the door open so maybe the vice principal down the hall would hear the noise. Got nothing done.

My junior infants or whatever that class was called. The teacher use to hit as a motivator. I can still remember writing a c instead of an a and getting slapped.

The principal of one of the primary schools I went to beat kids with a bamboo stick, she was a nun. The other nun in the school would jab her thumb into your back if answered a question incorrectly. If you got one right, you got a chocolate mouse.

Then the principal of another elementary school I went to would straight up beat the crap out of the students. He'd come in hungover a few times a week and we'd spend hours the morning after a big soccer match just talking about how the match went. He was kind of cool though because of that and for choir practice we got to sing Oasis songs.

Had a gay biology teacher who explained that semen was kind of salty in taste. Which was a life lesson that was really helpful to know. He'd spend most of the class talking about his personal life...

m0ynihan

danslevent wrote: »

If someone qualified as a Chemistry teacher they would know what an Amino Acid was. If he didn't then he lied about his degree and should have been reported.

A science teacher in my school didn't know what K stood for in the periodic table. That's inexcusable really.

3ndahalfof6

Myself.

ShamoBuc

Goegraphy teacher in 1st year - I never did the summer test as I went to the Gaeltacht for the last week of school - gave me an F for years conduct in class!! Fúcker!! Only F I ever got. I wasn't that bad, surely an E would have done:pac:

steddyeddy

danslevent wrote: »

If someone qualified as a Chemistry teacher they would know what an Amino Acid was. If he didn't then he lied about his degree and should have been reported.

Unfortunatly I think he did know but couldnt be bothered to explain it. Anyway we had alcoholic teachers too. It's incredible hard to get rid of a teacher especially if a 16 year old boy is doing the complaining.

m0ynihan

Wompa1 wrote: »

Had a gay biology teacher who explained that semen was kind of salty in taste. Which was a life lesson that was really helpful to know. He'd spend most of the class talking about his personal life...

He sounds great :rolleyes:

opinion guy

danslevent wrote: »

If someone qualified as a Chemistry teacher they would know what an Amino Acid was. If he didn't then he lied about his degree and should have been reported.

OR c) his boss put him teaching something that wasn't in his degree. This used to be common place. I think they've changed it in last few years or are trying to. But often teachers taught things that weren't in their degree.

Show Time

An old B*****d when i was in fifth and sixth class who was only marking the time till he finished up teaching.

Boscoirl

Yahoo


Google is much better

Fromthetrees

My worst teacher made us do homework everyday!!!

Best teacher by far was the lad who used to say who ever could get the loudest bang off the desk with their penis would win the prize of a free lollipop, ah man, I got so many lollipops from him, was a bit of a teachers pet really, stayed over in his gaf loads of times because I was such a good pupil, let me sleep in his bed and everything, pure sound, think he's in jail now for some reason or other.

Senna

Worst Secondary School Teacher; Complete alcoholic, which wouldn't be the worse but he just had no interest in teaching, he'd just sit at his desk and start reading from the text book, no interaction and never deviated from the text.
I had him for History in first year, but out of the 30 in his Leaving Cert Maths class only 3 passed. He still teaches there 15 years later and I doubt he got any better.

Worst Primary School Teacher; My 3rd and 4th class teacher was obsessed with the Irish language, we'd spend 3/4 hours everyday on it while other classes spent 1 hour. She'd be teaching Geography/History and she'd try and throw Irish into it. There was a compliant put in about it by one of the parents and the next day she just lost it with the class, saying we HAVE to spend this amount of time on Irish and how its so important. She wasn't even a native Irish speaker, years later I found out she opened a Gael Scoil, figured.

m0ynihan

Fromthetrees wrote: »

My worst teacher made us do homework everyday!!!

Best teacher by far was the lad who used to say who ever could get the loudest bang off the desk with their penis would win the prize of a free lollipop, ah man, I got so many lollipops from him, was a bit of a teachers pet really, stayed over in his gaf loads of times because I was such a good pupil, let me sleep in his bed and everything, pure sound, think he's in jail now for some reason or other.

What's he in jail for?

Agricola

Irish teacher in 2nd year. I'd imagine it was her first teaching job. Couldnt control the class. People just talked over her. She resorted to calling in the principal to dole out the threats.......every day! Im amazed I got through Irish that year considering I didnt do a tap.

She'd obviously picked the wrong career and I heard later on that she left teaching.

m0ynihan

Senna wrote: »

Worst Secondary School Teacher; Complete alcoholic, which wouldn't be the worse but he just had no interest in teaching, he'd just sit at his desk and start reading from the text book, no interaction and never deviated from the text.
I had him for History in first year, but out of the 30 in his Leaving Cert Maths class only 3 passed. He still teaches there 15 years later and I doubt he got any better.

Sounds like my JC English teacher, he was so lazy that he had recorded every book he ever needed onto a tape, played it during a class, and about every second day would pause it and tell us to underline something, complete waster. He also made us buy a book for 30 euro which we used once, which is just plain stupid.

Shryke

opinion guy wrote: »

OR c) his boss put him teaching something that wasn't in his degree. This used to be common place. I think they've changed it in last few years or are trying to. But often teachers taught things that weren't in their degree.

Also relatively few people qualify in Chemistry in Ireland. We have a big pharma industry and a lot of non-nationals get positions because we're not producing enough chemists. I imagine that reflects in the classroom.

steddyeddy

Fromthetrees wrote: »

My worst teacher made us do homework everyday!!!

Best teacher by far was the lad who used to say who ever could get the loudest bang off the desk with their penis would win the prize of a free lollipop, ah man, I got so many lollipops from him, was a bit of a teachers pet really, stayed over in his gaf loads of times because I was such a good pupil, let me sleep in his bed and everything, pure sound, think he's in jail now for some reason or other.

Yea I had a similar teacher I think my brothers burnt his house down for some reason.

ArtyM

Wompa1 wrote: »

Had a gay biology teacher who explained that semen was kind of salty in taste.

Wonder what the Leaving cert examiner thought when that fact was included in a student's answer.


We had a teacher who was too lazy to even hit us, instead he would stand at the top of the room with his fist extended and make the student run into it.

Was kinda funny to watch, when it wasnt you doing the running.

Dravokivich

Tech Graphics teacher, a couple of days before we split for the leaving cert, admitted to us that he did not know what the requirements would be to pass the exam, what level of detail was required to be enough to get the marks and such.

Wasn't much of a shock, when he was doing something new, we corrected him, based on the examples in the book.

steddyeddy

Shryke wrote: »

Also relatively few people qualify in Chemistry in Ireland. We have a big pharma industry and a lot of non-nationals get positions because we're not producing enough chemists. I imagine that reflects in the classroom.

Well I take it more people qaulify in organic chemistry than physical chemistry anyway here. Our teachers (and teachers of my friends) said stay away from physical chemistry unless you'r brilliant at maths!

Il Trap

m0ynihan wrote: »

A science teacher in my school didn't know what K stood for in the periodic table. That's inexcusable really.

I know a history teacher (degree subject and all!) who didn't know what 'war of attrition' meant. World War I is an important part of the LC course and as far as I am aware, the JC aswell. That's not just inexcusible, its quite unbelievable.

m0ynihan

steddyeddy wrote: »

Well I take it more people qaulify in organic chemistry than physical chemistry anyway here. Our teachers (and teachers of my friends) said stay away from physical chemistry unless you'r brilliant at maths!

Physical's the moles and stuff yeah? That stuff's a nightmare!

OneArt

Had a maths/biology teacher who would read from the book word-for-word. She would then do an example problem on the board (straight from the book) and spend the rest of the class telling us to practice and study ourselves. If you asked a question, she would read the explanation from the book.

She had no way of explaining things in her own words, we would've been better off studying the subject ourselves. Although in our very last biology class my friend and I decided we'd actually try and make her do her job. She did her usual reading from the book, so we kept asking more and more questions, basically pretending we hadn't a clue.

She ended up giving us a proper class for the first time in four years. So she wasn't really a sh!t teacher, just horribly lazy.

steddyeddy

m0ynihan wrote: »

Physical's the moles and stuff yeah? That stuff's a nightmare!

Well organic chemistry is a big one for the pharma sector but that also uses moles as does biochemistry. Phsyical chemsitry uses moles but you also study a lot more about individual molecules eg bond angles ect and a lot more besides.

PS. I'm a biochemist not a phsycial chemist so I dont no much or anything about phys cehm so feel free to correct me!

Shryke

steddyeddy wrote: »

Well I take it more people qaulify in organic chemistry than physical chemistry anyway here. Our teachers (and teachers of my friends) said stay away from physical chemistry unless you'r brilliant at maths!

Organic is much nicer alright. It still remains that you have 10 times as many biology degrees as chemistry degrees being given.

m0ynihan

I really don't understand the fascination with biology, in my year we've about 60 people doing biology vs. 10 in chemistry..

steddyeddy

Shryke wrote: »

Organic is much nicer alright. It still remains that you have 10 times as many biology degrees as chemistry degrees being given.

Yes that is very true. Even so from perspective hardly anyone (maybe less than chem) focuses on biochemistry as a degree. Maybe because you usually go through the biology route to get there.

steddyeddy

m0ynihan wrote: »

I really don't understand the fascination with biology, in my year we've about 60 people doing biology vs. 10 in chemistry..

Well its generally bad for biochem too. Anyone who wants to do it mostly comes through biology so most of them dont want to do anything chem related so run a mile from biochem!!

Corruptedmorals

Had an alcoholic for 1st year maths. Would write the pages up on the board, read the newspaper and if anyone had a problem, ask the person next to you. Mysteriously dissapeared around parent teacher meeting time, but was fired the next year. Too late for me as it seriously stunted my ability at maths even with family help. The teacher died a few years later, presumably drink related which is sad...but just so ridiculous that it took the school so long to fire him.

steddyeddy

Corruptedmorals wrote: »

Had an alcoholic for 1st year maths. Would write the pages up on the board, read the newspaper and if anyone had a problem, ask the person next to you. Mysteriously dissapeared around parent teacher meeting time, but was fired the next year. Too late for me as it seriously stunted my ability at maths even with family help. The teacher died a few years later, presumably drink related which is sad...but just so ridiculous that it took the school so long to fire him.

I'm actually shocked that one got fired at all!!

Chavways

My sixth year accounting teacher. I'm almost certain he isnt a qualified teacher. He was completely clueless. Totally dependent on his book of notes. Couldnt answer any questions. Was missing for 2 months because he was getting a masters in a completely different field. Couldnt explain anything either. And he even said yhat if we did bad it'd be the other teachers fault and not his.

I hate him

Rented Mule

I had a Geometry teacher in the States that felt that we should be learning everything on our own (through homework). He would assign us homework. Check it the next day and then explain how to do it. The entire cycle would continue ad nauseum.

He later became a local politician. He nearly got the head stuck in to him when he came to the door.

The funny thing is that in University I did more maths (including Geometry) and really loved it. It's amazing how one useless teacher can put you off of wanting to learn something.

Harry Angstrom

Had a lecturer once who spent years working for Bord Failte in America but didn't seem to know that Arkansas should be pronounced as "Arkansaw". He also seemed to think that Illinois should be pronounced in a French sounding way.

Ted_YNWA

m0ynihan wrote: »

Just curious.

My worst was my 2nd year maths teacher, complete pushover and couldn't explain stuff for his life...

Example:

My class used to throw shoes around the classroom. On numerous occasions the shoe would land right in front of him. What did he do? He gave it back!

No wonder I can't do factorising!

Sounds like the teacher I had for LC Honours Maths, was a bit of a pushover. Used to call him by his first name & that was the case for years by differet classes

DonkeyStyle \o/

m0ynihan wrote: »

My class used to throw shoes around the classroom.

Somewhere there's a thread about the worst classes a teacher has ever had.

m0ynihan

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote: »

Somewhere there's a thread about the worst classes a teacher has ever had.

Did you not read on? He threw the shoe back to them!

Honestly, he was a nice man, but he shouldn't have been teaching, and I know my class was a disgrace too :P

DonkeyStyle \o/

I think there's a place for rapport-building in place of punishment, but only if your classes' ring-leaders are open to it. I think I was lucky, since the strongest personalities in my class were fair-minded people. Physical bullying didn't really happen either because of this. If you tried to pick on the weedy guy, you'd get your ass handed to you fairly quickly.

leaveiton

steddyeddy wrote: »

Well I take it more people qaulify in organic chemistry than physical chemistry anyway here. Our teachers (and teachers of my friends) said stay away from physical chemistry unless you'r brilliant at maths!

Doing physical chemistry at the moment in college, horrible stuff! Can't wait until we get to move on to organic.

Worst teacher I had would be my LC Honours Maths teacher. Could barely do the stuff herself. 9 times out of 10 she'd put up the answer from a marking scheme instead of encouraging us to do it out ourselves, or even doing it herself. If she did do it, she wouldn't do it correctly. Wouldn't explain some parts of the course "because that's only for people going for As and Bs." Because everyone in the class was only aiming for a C, of course :rolleyes:

ToddyDoody

My friends had a physics teacher who would answer most questions cheerily with 'i don't know'

gutenberg

We had a History teacher in 5th year who didn't even own the book we were using, she used to always borrow one off one of us. Then, in class, she would just get everyone to read the book aloud, then tell us to do the questions at the end of the chapter. Absolutely useless. At the end-of-year exams then she was even more erratic; we were expected to do essays even though she had never given us an essay to do during the time she taught, and then she gave out some crazy marks: some of the really good students got Ds, while others were getting 99%?!

In addition, one of the topics we did with her was Nazism, so she decided she'd make us watch Leni Riefenstahl's The Triumph of the Will :eek: Except she kept forgetting where she'd stopped it in the previous class, so we kept watching the same bit over & over, which seeing as it kept her from 'teaching' us we didn't complain too much about Then, during one class while we were studying Stalin, she borrowed my friend's book to read as per usual, and when she got it back this teacher had circled Stalin's name, drawn a little arrow out to the side, and written 'prick' in the margin?! :eek::D

Cee-Jay-Cee

We had a geography teacher who was a raging alcoholic, we had him first thing monday tuesday and thursday and last class friday. He arrived in every morning either half cut or with a raging headache and spent the class either telling jokes or with his head buried in his arms telling us to do what ever we wanted so long as we didnt make any noise. We of course thought it was great as it gave us time to do whatever homework we had for other classes that day. Never learned a stitch about geography though. He was sacked when i was in 3rd year.

tomboylady

I had an Irish teacher for 2nd/3rd year who was just a few years away from retirement and had obviously just had enough. He would come into the classroom at the beginning of class, do a roll call, and then head back to the staff room. He'd come back in about 3 minutes before the end of class to give us homework which he never checked. It was an Honours class and by the time the JC came, about 12 people had dropped to Foundation level.

FloatingVoter

Maths teacher at pass level LC - the man was apparently a mathematical genius. The trouble was he couldn't speak English in any understandable fashion. And yes, he was a homegrown West Limerick son of the soil.
There was another psychotic git in primary school whose grave I must piss on someday.